Development of associations between elementary school students' mindsets and attentional neural processing of feedback in an arithmetic task

Ita Puusepp; Tanja Linnavalli; Tuisku Tammi; Minna Huotilainen; Teija Kujala; Sonja Laine; Elina Kuusisto; Kirsi Tirri

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1155264

Development of associations between elementary school students' mindsets and attentional neural processing of feedback in an arithmetic task

Front Psychol. 2023 Mar 14:14:1155264. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1155264. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ita Puusepp¹, Tanja Linnavalli^{1

2

3}, Tuisku Tammi⁴, Minna Huotilainen^{1

2

3}, Teija Kujala^{2

3}, Sonja Laine^{1

5}, Elina Kuusisto⁶, Kirsi Tirri¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
² Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
³ Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
⁴ Cognitive Science, Department of Digital Humanities, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
⁵ Viikki Normal School, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
⁶ Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the development of the associations between elementary school students' mindsets and the attentional neural processing of positive and negative feedback in math. For this, we analyzed data collected twice from 100 Finnish elementary school students. During the autumn semesters of their 3rd and 4th grade, the participants' general intelligence mindset and math ability mindset were measured with a questionnaire, and their brain responses elicited by performance-relevant feedback were recorded during an arithmetic task. We found that students' fixed mindsets about general intelligence and math ability were associated with greater attention allocated to positive feedback as indicated by a larger P300. These associations were driven by the effects of mindsets on attention allocation to positive feedback in grade 4. Additionally, 4th graders' more fixed general intelligence mindset was marginally associated with greater attention allocated to negative feedback. In addition, the effects of both mindsets on attention allocation to feedback were marginally stronger when the children were older. The present results, although marginal in the case of negative feedback and mainly driven by effects in grade 4, are possibly a reflection of the greater self-relevance of feedback stimuli for students with a more fixed mindset. It is also possible that these findings reflect the fact that, in evaluative situations, mindset could influence stimulus processing in general. The marginal increase in the effects of mindsets as children mature may reflect the development of coherent mindset meaning systems during elementary school years.

Keywords: P300 - event related potential; feedback; implicit beliefs; math; mindset.

Grants and funding

A personal working grant (Grant No. 00190856) from Suomen Kulttuurirahasto enabled the corresponding author to work on designing the study and to collect and pre-process half the data. The Faculty of Educational Sciences of the University of Helsinki provided the funding for the collection and pre-processing of the data. Helsinki University Library paid the publication fees.